Giving Compass' Take:

• Credentialing preschool teachers is very costly, and hard for some people to justify. When students do receive the degrees, they will be paid lower wages compared to kindergarten and elementary school teachers.

• Can we increase support systems for preschool teachers while they're in school?

• Read about the increased enrollment in preschools, but at the expense of quality education.

Over the past few years, early childhood education has become the holy grail for those seeking to improve America’s schools and, with them, the life prospects of disadvantaged kids.

At the same time that expert consensus is solidifying around the importance of excellent preschool instruction, many are insisting that the time has come to fully professionalize a field that has traditionally welcomed job seekers lacking a higher education.

With a growing number of states embracing the idea of universal, publicly funded pre-K, and multiple signs indicating a move toward more stringent professional requirements, New America and Bellwether Education Partners have released a report projecting what the transition could look like.

The main takeaway: The urge to lift standards for those working with small children is on a collision course with the paltry compensation those teachers currently receive for their labors.

The paper collects observations and advice from a conference of experts on early childhood teacher preparation held last year. Encouraging more professional credentialing without emphasizing quality or affordability could force financially stressed workers to pay thousands of dollars for a degree of dubious worth, they warn.

Preschool teachers differ in a number of ways from their colleagues in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. While K-12 teachers are largely female (68 percent), preschool teachers are overwhelmingly so (98 percent). Most important of all, kindergarten and elementary teachers, almost all of whom are college-educated, earn about double what preschool teachers do.

Kathy Glazer, president of the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation and one of the experts consulted for the report, said she believes that a straightforward bachelor’s requirement is an imprecise proxy for the competencies demanded of an early educator.

Read the full article about pre-school teachers by Kevin Mahnken at Home |The 74